A guide for the perplexed -- the craziness out there needs deciphering, and you can get that from this roundup of Good Reads on Trump's authoritarian test bench, white supremacy old and new and the phenomenon called QAnon.

Canvass for building power!

Progressive Maryland activists in all our statewide chapters are gearing up for lots of canvassing and base building in August and into September, followed by more contacts to expand Maryland’s electorate by registering and activating voters so the Blue Wave nationwide will wash higher in the Free State than anywhere else, and send Larry Hogan back to private life. Join us as we build power for working families throughout the state and elect Ben Jealous as a progressive governor who will put the state on the right course.

Larry Hogan's proposal for toll lanes for I-495, I-270 and (gasp) the B-W Parkway has plenty of critics -- as a false promise of jobs, a congestion-reduction plan that will actually find more cars filling more roads, or as a crowd-pleasing move to offset the ill will the governor engendered with his racially-tinged cancellation of Baltimore's Red Line.

Maryland currently spends $59 billion a year on health care, putting the projected $24 billion cost of Ben Jealous's "Medicare for All" plan in perspective. Jealous celebrates the recent anniversary of the signing of the Medicare bill with how it is evolving over the years and is overdue to debut as the pattern for health care for all Marylanders.

Progressive Maryland activists in all our statewide chapters are gearing up for lots of canvassing and base building in August and into September, followed by more contacts to expand Maryland’s electorate by registering and activating voters so the Blue Wave nationwide will wash higher in the Free State than anywhere else, and send Larry Hogan back to private life. Join us.

Larry Hogan is being portrayed as a sunny "centrist" running against a "dangerous, risky" radical in Ben Jealous. The picture is wrong: Hogan's business-aligned administration has made working families his collateral damage. And Jealous is neither risky or dangerous.

If local progressives and leftists want to ensure stability and democracy, they should look beyond outdated military alliances. Two Montgomery County leftists reviewed the history of NATO and how it is viewed by international left parties in Europe, what they find shows NATO is anything but a stabilizing or democratic force.

Ben Jealous will win the governor’s race in November, despite Larry Hogan’s big money and inexplicable popularity. But, as sharp editorial observers have noted, he will not do that without “boots on the ground.” That means us – and you, who are part of us.

Why would progressives working at the local level care whether or not Donald Trump is trashing our relationship with our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? Because, a Shore activist says, progressive organizing at the local level is hampered when the US is in the grip of the insecurity and disruption that Trump uses as cover for his misgovernment. NATO is a stabilizing force.

As the Maryland General Election cycle gets under way, progressive activists around the state will be focusing on one thing: everyone eligible to vote needs to know about the election, about the stakes and about why it is important that their own voices and the voices of their neighbors to be heard in the way it counts most – numbers of votes.